54 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



civilization a surprising movement the like of which 

 the human mind will probably never see again. 



In watching modern Germany advancing towards 

 the Armageddon, a psychic centre of particular 

 interest and significance is in Nietzsche's writings 

 and in Haeckel's effort to define the ethic of 

 Darwinism and to compare it with that previously 

 prevailing in Western civilization. Haeckel's 

 popularization of Darwin began early, but its 

 bearing may be best studied in its clearest 

 form in his Riddle of the Universe. In this effort 

 it may be observed that all the ideas revolve 

 round a single fundamental conception. According 

 to Haeckel the supreme mistake of the Christian 

 ethic consists in this. It conceives that there 

 exists in the ordinary man a kind of dualism, some 

 fundamental principle of opposition, that is to say, 

 between himself and society, between the good of 

 himself and the good of the world, between the 

 individual and universal. 



According to Haeckel all this is undiluted non- 

 sense. There is no place whatever, he tells us, for 

 anything of the kind in the Darwinian ethic. Man, 

 in Haeckel's interpretation of Darwinism, is simply 

 a " social vertebrate." His social duties and his 

 duties to himself are, therefore, one and the same, 

 and grow from the same root in the past. The 



